List of country-name etymologies

From Classical Persian افغان‎ (afğān, "Afghan"), from Bactrian αβαγανο (abagano), first attested in the fourth century CE, most likely a compound of *apāka- ("distant, faraway"), from Proto-Iranian *Hapá, from Proto-Indo-Iranian *Hapá ("away"), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂epó + *-āna ("ethnic group"), from Proto-Indo-European *-nós, thus: "people from a distant land".

[1] Various scholars have proposed Sanskrit etymologies since the nineteenth century (especially prior to the 2007 publication of earlier Bactrian attestations for the word), but linguist Johnny Cheung notes that these are "extremely difficult to reconcile" with recent evidence pointing to a Bactrian source.

The exact origin of the word Bangla is unknown, though it is believed to come from "Vanga", an ancient kingdom mentioned in world's largest Epic Mahabharat even Ramayan and geopolitical division on the Ganges delta in the Indian subcontinent.

[81] The Indo-Aryan suffix Desh is derived from the Sanskrit word deśha, which means "land" or "country".

It was coined in 1933 as Pakstan by Choudhry Rahmat Ali, a Pakistan Movement activist, who published it in his pamphlet Now or Never,[281] using it as an acronym ("thirty million Muslim brethren who live in PAKSTAN") referring to the names of the five northwestern regions of the British Indian Empire: Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan".

[282][283][284] The letter i was incorporated to ease pronunciation and form the linguistically correct and meaningful name.

[285] The English word Palestine is derived from the Latin Palestina ("Roman Province of Palestine"), which is derived from the Ancient Greek Παλαιστίνη (Palaistine, "Philistia and surrounding regions"), which is in turn derived from the Hebrew פלשת (Pelesheth, "land of the Philistines")[287] Uganda is named after the Buganda Kingdom which occupies the central region of the country.